Google’s Oligarchic Algorithm

I've
been running a web development firm since January 1999.
Google and my firm were born a few months from each other.
By chance, I began tracking Google's rise shortly after its
appearance, noting the efficacy of its search perimeters
along with that of its competition.

Though Google was a
very powerful tool early in its career, that muscular
efficiency has diminished. That seems due to several
factors.

Those folks whose job it is to figure out how
Google works to achieve higher rankings often performed
their job well, depreciating the searches that Google
offered. Corporations able to pay the most money for
professional optimizers tended to get the highest rankings.
Google's results often showed which firms had the most
resources to pay for position. Google's algorithms could
not distinguish value from money.

Still, if you typed in
"Chicago photographer," you got a list of Chicago
photographers on the first page, individuals seeking to sell
their services to searchers looking for what photographers
had to offer. That is not the case now.

Google decided to
go public in 2004. On November 15, 2004, they enacted the
first of several major algorithm changes, pushing many of
the optimized sites from top positions, penalizing websites
for using techniques that gamed Google's evaluation
algorithm. The result was an overnight tripling of Google
revenues. Corporations and businesses formerly paying
optimizers for high rankings to appear on the first page of
a search were forced to pay Google for their ranking, on the
right side of the screen, where Google sold ads.

It became
in Google's best interest that searchers looking for
commercial products or services NOT find what they were
looking for so that the Google advertising section would
profit from the click.

It was clear to me that in
preparation for going public, Google was actually seeding
its searches with inefficiencies in order to encourage
profits. Regarding commercial searches, it's only got worse
with time. By embedding top 10 positions with Wikipedia
entries, videos and other tangentially related content,
commercial businesses continue to be pushed into the second
page, forced to pay Google for ad space.

I recently read
that Google has decided to place a heavier emphasis on
"brand" or conventional corporate websites when deciding how
to rank. It is adjusting its algorithm to make it even more
difficult for those businesses without deep pockets to
achieve rankings. One could call this the new oligarchic
algorithm.

As a small web developer seeking rankings for
small, local businesses, I find the decisions that Google
has made over the years have been sometimes fair, sometimes
selfish, sometimes in between. The trend has been toward
depreciating its mission of providing useful searches in
order to make money while encouraging the corporate status
quo.

This has been a particular problem for local
businesses seeking business using the Google Ad Words
program, where Google derives most of its revenue.

The
company that would do no evil has little heart. Google's
attention continues to focus on those larger "brands" or
corporations that it sees as peers in a global economic
landscape dominated by corporate, controlling interests.
Google encourages the status quo in several ways, using
conventions that concentrate wealth with the very
few.

Google's famous algorithm encourages those sites with
the most incoming links to rise to the top of rankings.
Google has difficulty judging value outside a context of
popularity or the simulated popularity that comes with
businesses buying links to their sites to get high rankings.
Google theoretically ranks respect. What it often only
ranks is how much money a business is willing to spend to
appear to be getting respect. Or, it ranks how large a
corporation has become, presupposing that respect comes with
size.

In the Google universe, each planet or business has
size and gravity that can be determined by measuring mass.
Google's algorithm presupposes that mass, respect as
determined by incoming links or established brand, is the
only variable that determines gravity. There is more to
respect than popularity or power. Google has no algorithm
for measuring integrity.

Google is losing integrity in the
process.

Before Google, the local yellow pages served
local businesses by being the place where potential
customers would seek local products and services. The
Internet has destroyed the yellow pages. Local businesses
are furious at the costs and poor results with yellow pages.
Local firms are moving over to Google Ad Words as one of the
few alternatives that approximates what the yellow pages
used to offer. Some of those local businesses are using the
services that some of the yellow pages companies are
offering whereby the yellow pages becomes the broker for a
local business with Google Ad Words.

Google works out
agreements with the yellow pages to allow the yellow pages
to act as an agent for a local firm, managing what the local
firm spends with Google. The yellow pages drives traffic to
a business's website off of a Google Ad Words listing
managed by the yellow pages.

Typically, a store contracts
with the yellow pages for $500 a month to bring it traffic
from Google. Usually that traffic goes to a special page
created by the yellow pages that allows it to track exact
traffic patterns, even noting the number of phone calls if a
dedicated phone line is assigned to appear on that page.
There is no transparency. The store is not allowed to know
how much it is spending on any particular visitor.

It
doesn't know how much money went to Google or how much to
the yellow pages. The store can form its own division and
figure out how much it is paying for each person that showed
up on the page, but it has no idea which search phrases are
performing and which are not. It also has no idea what
percentage of the $500 is going toward the yellow pages.
Typically, an Ad Words specialist receives 10-20 percent.
There is no transparency.

In addition, the yellow pages
often brokers or handles the account for literally all
competitors in a region. Google bases its Ad Words rates on
several factors, the most important being how much money is
being spent by the business. With the yellow pages handling
many and sometimes all competitor bids, it is not acting in
the best interest of the stores it represents by controlling
bids to keep the rates low, but the yellow pages is behaving
in its own best interest by pushing bids higher to beef up
advertising expenditures.

It is a devastating conflict
of interest for the yellow pages to be managing several
competitors in a market. In addition, any local business
seeking to buy positions in the Ad Words programs on its
own, in those areas that compete with several businesses
managed by the yellow pages, ends up paying fees inflated by
the yellow pages interventions.

Google, working with the
yellow pages to manage this program, takes the low integrity
position of siding with the large corporation against the
local businesses. Google and the yellow pages end up making
enormous profits because they control the system. Small
business gets screwed.

Will Google be seen as the bad guy
when this corporate scam becomes widely known? I'm thinking
likely not. Most stores I know loathe the yellow pages.
There are several types of yellow pages in many markets.
Not all engage in this practice. But they'll all probably
be associated with this scandal when it blows.

Join the Scoop Citizen Community

20 years of independent publishing is a milestone, but your support is essential to keep Scoop thriving. We are building on our offering with thedig.nz our new In-depth Engaged Journalism platform. Now, more than ever sustainable financial support of the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism will help to keep these vital and participatory media services running.
Find out more and join us:

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture On May 19th, an implicit international political warning was issued, but it wasn’t issued between countries; it was issued between allied versus opposed factions within each of two countries: U.S. and Ukraine. ... More>>

Hell has, in its raging fires, ringside seats for those who like their spreadsheets. The seating, already peopled by those from human resources, white collar criminals and accountants, becomes toastier for those who make errors with those spreadsheets. ... More>>

The COVID-19 crisis is compelling us to kick-start investment in a regenerative and zero-carbon future. We were bold enough to act quickly to stop the virus - can we now chart a course for a just recovery? More>>

Reaction to the New Zealand government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown has ranged from high praise to criticism that its actions were illegal and its management chaotic. More>>

The Commentariat There is a regular commentariat who appear on places such as 'The Panel' on Radio New Zealand (4pm on weekdays), and on panels on television shows such as Newshub Nation (TV3, weekends) and Q+A (TV1, Mondays). Generally, these panellists ... More>>

For anybody familiar with that gruesome manifestation of the modern work place, namely the open plan office, the advent of coronavirus might be something of a relief. The prospects for infection in such spaces is simply too great. You are at risk from ... More>>

The world's worst Putin puppet is escalating tensions with Russia even further, with the Trump administration looking at withdrawal from more nuclear treaties in the near future. In addition to planning on withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty ... More>>

The “gate” suffix has been wearing thin since the break-in scandal that gave it its birth. Since Watergate, virtually anything dubious and suggestive, and much more besides, is suffixed. Which brings us to the issue of President Donald Trump’s ... More>>

As New Zealand passes the half-way mark towards moving out of Level Four lockdown, the trade-offs involved in life-after-lockdown are starting to come into view. All very well for National’s finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith to claim that “The number one priority we have is to get out of the lockdown as soon as we can”…Yet as PM Jacinda Ardern pointed out a few days ago, any crude trade-off between public health and economic well-being would be a false choice... More>>

If the title of epidemiological czar were to be created, its first occupant would have to be Sweden’s Anders Tegnell. He has held sway in the face of sceptics and concern that his “herd immunity” approach to COVID-19 is a dangerous, and breathtakingly ... More>>